"boom!: talking about the sixties - what happened, how it shaped today, lessons for tomorrow," 2007, and finally "the time of our lives" what his latest book, came out last year. tom brokaw has been our guest for the last three hours here on "in depth." thank you, sir. >> guest: thank you very much. ..

business channels and the judges of the youngest superior court judge in the history of the state of new jersey serving on the bench of 1987 to 1995. he also served as a professor of constitutional law school for many years and he's published six books on government and the law and they are all terrific by the way. his latest book published last fall is called it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. [laughter] great title. the case for personal freedom. please help me welcoming a true champion of economic and individual liberty, judge andrew napolitano. [applause] >> my friend of chair suggested that nice to be here.

they will make you a scene for your lunch and you better do a good job introducing this character stossel. [laughter] this character speeseventeen i first met. he probably doesn't remember this in 1969 when i was a freshman and he was a senior, not at the institution after which this place is named, but the block of orange river students at princeton together. john had long hair, was running a newspaper, left-wing radical, the daily print domini and was wearing a t-shirt that said burn it down, baby. [laughter] that's all right. i had a crewcut and was wearing a t-shirt that said bomb hanoi. [laughter] since then -- [applause] since then, the two of us have answered that siren call of human freedom and have devoted our careers to the defense of it

and have the privilege of doing so on the bench in the superior court in new jersey and in new jersey and new york city courtrooms john has done so on television like no other person has. john, as you know, is the recipient of 19 emmys. most of my colleagues would kill to have geithner. john has 19. why does he have 19 emmys? because he is intellectually honest, utterly steadfast, and always on top of his game. i'm going to give an example. the other day i was at princeton university and listened to a speech by george will. he was comparing the presidency of to príncipe and xu became president, woodrow wilson and james madison. you can imagine which one he favored thank goodness. seat destiny is a woman that keeps poking me in the ribs of free time he says something.

at the end of the speech pa pa visas you should telstra seven he should come down and do one of the shows at princeton. there would be a thousand students screaming to hear him. i said to her really? she said yes. when you and stossel were students, you were the only to libertarians but that is in the case now. i think to myself is this some of job or some lady that i should know who she is talking about stossel like this? i said by the way my name is andrew napolitano. she said yes, i know who you are. on and shirley tallman, the president of princeton university. [laughter] so there's your invitation, john. one day i was getting a little carried away on the air. one day i was getting carried away on the air and i used the phrase i really believe in. i know there are arguments on the other side, and i know not everybody in the room will agree with me but i happened to utter the phrase taxation is theft.

he called me and said george, you're killing me. i said what you mean i'm telling you? he said when you see something like taxation as theft, like in boxes filled with e-mails saying why not use a that kind of stuff? [laughter] john is a champion of human freedom who has the gift of explaining in a way that everybody can understand, and nobody can find him disagreeable. i was looking at a piece of his literature from something from reason advertising some speech i'm going to be getting in november, and there was a picture in this recent publication of john stossel about two or three weeks ago playing volleyball on a beach in california with a bunch of 19-year-olds. now if you blink your eye is free times, you couldn't tell which of them was, fill in the blank, john's age and which one

was the 19-year-old. there were times i look at him and say that's what i want to look like when i grow up. [laughter] i know when i was on the bench i used to say that's what i want to be like when i grow up. and now i can say he's the man i admire both, colleague and mentor john stossel. [applause] i should say i interviewed him for my first tv special when i was branching out in your direction and tillman said we couldn't use it. [laughter] he's changed since then i can

add it as a consumer reporter not from really understanding it but seeing how life worked and approach the economic side of it, and that's what we know, they can't is about. by becoming you say the people at fox would love to get in. they don't give emmys for people at fox. they are garbage, a gift to social reporters that - business. that's something that won 19 emmys and i stopped winning any emmy awards the play of the last election campaign there was all the excitement for the magic politician and the intensity of that was extraordinary and frankly it's all great if we means to treat people but it means in their mind and in many people's minds of comes to mean

the state, and this is really a bad idea. but as i have come to learn, it is intuitive that maybe you understand life doesn't work that way, but to most people, and there is all of this polling information people don't trust government and congress has a 12% approval rating that may be true. people's instinct of reaction is that the government has to do something. think about after september september 11th. we have to take over airport security. tom daschle said you can't professionalize if you don't federalize if people are scared they had let these people go through in fact they had obey all of the rules, the small - they brought on in the box cutters on the unlocked cockpit doors. there are minimum wage workers

often and private profit seeking contractors, people viewed that as a risk and said now we have the tsa. how is that working out for us? [laughter] so, you know your experience with it. i didn't realize the extent goes well beyond that. how much do they spend on the private screeners? not twice as much. ten times as much. and in law, they put to say if your city wants to opt out to get back into the system europe uses and most of the world uses contacting under government supervision, which of course is better because they have to compete and they can fire them if you are bad you can't fire the government, it creates flexibility. if you want to do that, just ask the tsa. a couple of places have, kansas city, the largest and francisco. so we go to san francisco to shoot these people and they say things like these strangers are

nicer and the line moves more quickly. and tsa undercover studies have found that they are much more likely to catch contraband in san francisco and the government are. why is that? we look into it. it's a private contractor who knows he has to work hard to keep the job, and he does all kind of innovative experiments. dayron contests where the best can win $2,000. who can find the contraband fastest, who can pack a bag most quickly to keep airports happy if they get hired next year they shift them around so the wind keeps moving so all these other airports want to get these private screeners which are legal under the law and applied under the tsa and it ignores them for a year doesn't even respond, and finally a few months ago we say we don't because of the advantages to the federal government that's the new standard how can we move

people along and keep people safe, what is advantageous to us in the bureaucracy has built an empire and its goal is to keep itself going and this is not into it for what people shout yes, we can. now, i've learned this the hard way. i was a consumer reporter on the left cheering on government regulation and the canada libertarian when i finally saw it didn't working you were smarter about this than i but it's not intuitive. we really have to work hard to explain this to people. we are not wired to understand that a free society can solve the complex economic problems. we grew up in a family to believe that mom and dad know best and should plan for us. our ancestors grew up in tribes if you didn't obey the leader and harvest the fruit at the right time, you die and didn't give birth to less.

we are programmed to follow the leader, the mechanism where adam smith showed how the invisible hand can do this better. but it doesn't make sense to most americans. i do these pieces which tried to explain to people, and over here she runs a charity that gives it high school students we can at least introduce these ideas, and i hope he will support her and give her your card. but it is an uphill climb, and i see this again and again. the one example of a success of private markets is in south america. it's a basket case in south america. one country is doing quite well and that's chile. the biggest reason is because of this guy of the finance minister created a private social security accounts. so instead of trusting the government to give you money, everybody has a little savings book and they can watch the

money appreciate and it makes them think about their own money and investment through the symbol innovation and i give president bush credit he was the guest speaker but he went to every state to sell that in america and got nowhere. people are horrified by the idea. so i go to chile and expect to find people who will say this is great. but everybody that i interview, nobody says that. everybody says you know, the bank that administers this, the fee is too high and the government ought to step in and reduce income. nobody understood the mechanism that had made their lives better. this is also true true in hong kong. milton friedman's famous case, the most popular high school video that andrea gives out and one that says is america's number one and i ask students why does america prospered, and they think for a while. it's because we are a democracy.

and i say well, india is a democracy and india is poor. india is overpopulated. actually, the population density of india is the same of that of new jersey. [laughter] they say well, america has natural resources but so does india. we can say what about hong kong, it doesn't have democracy or natural resources, yet it got rich. they went from third world to first world in just 50 years. they are as rich as we are. why is that? they don't know of course, but because of economic liberty coming and now we have the heritage and freedom polls that compare the countries, but economic freedom and the places that are free are the best places to live. this is not intuitive and when i went to hong kong i tried to open a business in new york and it took me months. i could open one in one day and that's why they're prosperous

they made the same. the government should step in and fix this problem. chellie reminds me i know all of you are reading "the new york times" canceled subscriptions and i applaud you for that. but i read that because i feel i really have to know what my neighbors and my former abc colleagues are worshiping. did you see the sunday magazine this week? this was the cover. a big story was this one. they made her an icon which is impossible to live up to. so this is the story about a movement in chile where they have private schooling and they are doing quite well that there is inequality. and because there is inequality, people are very upset, and so they are having occasional riots about why isn't college free. the president of chile,

sebastian, the younger brother of jose had a good answer i thought. he said he defended chellie's educational system by calling education a consumer good. and he went on to say that we will all like education health care. many of these things could be free but when all is said and done, nothing in life is free. someone has to pay. it seems reasonable. education isn't free. this was a hugely popular prisoner. remember the miners were rescued , and then the protests started. part of the problem is people on our side of a quite. she's the one being profiled in "the new york times" with a 23-year-old communist. and she is popular now. jose, sebastian is not.

she is learning in this debate. she has heard him saying someone has to pay by saying of course someone has to pay but one of the state through taxes on large corporations, and the nationalization of resources that it just feels good to people, sounds good. she went on to say entrepreneurs had speculated and had grown wealthy of the dreams and expectations of thousands of young people in the chilly. the popularity ratings which were way up are now 22%, the lowest of any chilean president in history. the student movement popularity is 72%. part of because she's young and good-looking but most of it because these ideas just make sense to people. they are intuitive. the idea that our brains are

going to do economic reasoning just fights the way that we were wired. we are not wired to reason alcalde in personal market forces solve problems, and nobody goes to the streets to celebrate these marginal improvements that constantly have been. but its economic freedom that works. now come here to back at the manhattan institute to fight this. i want to branch off to one of my other areas where you have really lead. peter schubert talked about this and set in law school we are taught that you can manage life through paper and procedure, and that makes sense to people hence the tort bar has made themselves so rich because they set up the assumption that they will compensate the victims who are injured by the greedy corporate

sellers kennedy will detour you from doing it again. and this just makes sense to people. big companies selling drugs hurt somebody. somebody has to pay. the drug company should have put up more work. it is coming as you've heard here in such a horrible system. we will compensate the victims. there are lots of ways to compensate the victims you can do it for government, you can director private charity. but this system is an awful way to do it because most of the money goes to the middleman. so most of the money, the tort bar takes 30 or 40 present that you add in the defense cost, and the court cost 70% of the money almost goes to the middle of it and it takes ten years to get paid, and then the wrong people get paid. a harvard study in your account medical malpractice cases most people that got paid were not victims of malpractice, and most who were victims didn't get any. yet this is the tort system that dominates the america and allows

them to buy private jets and to kill product innovation. the even interfere in the information that helps free people protect themselves. when you fire someone on your business to you ever when somebody calls up and says he fired this guy. why? because he is lazy and reckless come you don't tell the company that he's being lazy and reckless because your human-resources department will say are you crazy? you will get a legal suit and spend $100,000 just defending what was your good decisions in uzi we agreed to part companies. so, america doesn't even tell delta when the fire a pilot because he was a drunk which makes us less sick. while and it is so intuitive to say we should have more labels on everything to remind people this could be risky what is the result, ever look at birth control pill label?

the happen to have one. [laughter] yet to give birth. [laughter] how does this make us safer? this is what lawyers bring us, tiny fine print and it's true if you read this you wouldn't want it anymore. [laughter] they don't make us safer, they make us poor, they deprive us of innovation. could you hold this for minute? [laughter] but today when because intuition is on their side. yes, we can make you safe. capitalism performs miracles all the time. we have lifted more people out of the mud and misery and poverty through markets in the third world than ever before. nobody in america knows the people here to say why is

education free? occupy wall street protest down there, they want mark. we take it for granted that we get the supermarkets have 30,000 products and they rarely plays and anybody. and all the products are cheap. we take for granted i can go to a foreign country and stick a piece of plastic and the wall and cash will come out and i can give that same piece of plastic to a soldier to be cassandra and he will read me a car for a weekend when i get home weisel or mastercard will have the accounting correct for payment. the government, buy contrast, can't even count the vote accurately. and yet obama was elected partly on the message we are going to fix health care. obamacare by the time it passed might not have been popular but most people in the country wanted the government to do something about health care. and health care really isn't a free market even before obamacare. it's already been messed up by

the government steps that encourage people to buy insurance if somebody else pays, but the results are already out there and they are already awful. a couple of years ago the detroit medical center announced proudly that it was using bar codes to use computers to electronically keep track of all of its patience and all their medical records. isn't this great? but think about. supermarkets did that 40 years ago. coke and pepsi is obviously less important than our medical records. but it took four years of insanity before we brought this to the system where insurance companies and governments are pulling the strings. frederick hayek said the task of economics is to teach man how little he in the stands about what he thinks he can design.

that is what i hope to do with. it is a big battle. i thank you for fighting it. clearly, leaving people freak is what makes us prosperous. and economists tend to focus on the prosperous part of the statement that it's not the most important one. the free part is. it sounds a vague but it is just as important because individuals and their freedom matter. it is a moral objection to the big government to say at least it leaves us less free because its control over our own lives is diminished if we can't tell our neighbors to leave us alone we are not just free, we are not just less free. we are less of big government makes us all smaller. i thank you for fighting against it. [applause]

>> so jongh will answer questions. we have the microphone. it's a big room so i would ask that you let john yield the questions. please wait for the microphone to get you and tell us who you are. >> i would just let you ladies to the microphone so we go quickly back-and-forth and you pick whoever. >> thank you very much for all of your entertaining on tv. as a lawyer that was represented, corporations and actions in a tight he talked about in firing people and other things, you are being a piker saying is when the cost $100,000 of legal fees.

what i want to do is ask you this question. i tell you i'm a conservative, not a libertarian. and i've always wondered what you would say in answer to the question constantly on television and elsewhere against government intervention in the areas where does libertarianism and anarchy begin? how do we avoid, which i assume you would want to avoid anarchy? yet have freedom for people. this is the constitution. it's much better than what we have now. but basically, you should be allowed -- libertarians say people should be allowed to do anything. there's a will for government to make sure i don't kill you or hurt you or take your stuff.

the system handled pollution but i'm happy to have government to have pollution control, and like hayak i'm happy to have a limited social safety. but that's about it and that's all we need, and america grew fastest during the first 150 years when the government was less than 5% of the economy. now, it is 40%. 105% would be good. >> i saw the program last night. i'm a professor of political science. last night you had something on head start and you shared the head start. that's been known it was created because -- >> i didn't know. >> by law headstart has to be evaluated every year.

the evaluations are been stockpiled. my question is this. do you think that head start is about helping young children become smarter or is it a work job program about airport security, all these terrible programs are not really terrible when it comes to making government jobs and that is the real purpose. so how would you respond to the fact that the governments have called their programs all sorts of things but many of them are not any more than job creation. by those measures they are very good. >> they are and that's what they've become. i'm more cynical. i did the people behind these programs are going to work and head start was a good example again intuitively it just has to work. our kids, we read to them, most of them have two parents. i had had sort obviously. went out in the rich country and spend some government money

spent about 180 billion so far to give the truly needy a little head start some caring teachers they will be as far as behind. but then finally, as you say, the government evaluates the program and compare the kids leader and was and just by high school there was no difference. there was no difference they couldn't tell who had had a serve and who didn't buy the next year by first grade. in a reasonable world tsa would say they do a much better job for one-third of the money. we will get out of this business and turned back to what europe and israel do but they don't do that and head start spend more money after they found it was not accomplishing its goal.

>> thank you for coming today and all the work you do. my name is tom and i've worked in the commercial real-estate investment sales of retail properties. one thing which manages all of the social security money that comes in the government. they are pouring billions to the u.s. economy. bush brought that up and prioritized in the social security. this to me what seem like a tremendous winner and imet rahm but it would appeal to the younger generation it would appeal to our investors and would probably appeal to the union workers in the construction because if canadians can perhaps spend billions a year in investments would be spending a structural permit of 300 billion roughly. are you aware of cppib?

>> you canadians don't publicize this very well. >> i'm a good all-american. [laughter] but i see that money coming in coming and i would be happy to share some. >> canada is a usual success story in many ways and we think of canada as the socialist country with government-run single payer health care. the economic freedom of these days are ahead of the united states, about 20 years ago a liberal government saw that they were on the track to go broke as we are now and we cut government spending, not from the way the washington types cut it from what they wanted to spend next year but the cut $6 for every 1 dollar the taxes they raised the heavy slate of homeownership. they've done well in many ways and the canadian dollar the was

then worth 70 cents is now worth about a dollar. the government republicans and democrats both want to have the united states be the world's policeman thus the way they are all working. you would ask everybody around here they would find a 80% of the people say we should not. >> in this room i think that this room is pretty hawkish. >> i think you find that they are not. most people look back and say iraq had a good idea, afghanistan we ought to get out, there was a big mistake. most of the world would think we have some questions, so this is

different than economics. >> do you have a comment on that? >> i do, i have a chapter on defense, and i start by saying i am really uncomfortable writing this chapter because i am surrounded by all of these smart people that have studied defense and war and diplomacy all their lives and they say we need to be in all of these places. but the government, which has failed at everything that it's done since i've looked at, why would we assume that it would be good at policing the world? and we now still have 50,000 soldiers in germany. i thought we won that war. and if 30,000 in japan, 40,000 in south korea all leftover from the cold war. eisenhower's military-industrial complex does live on.

there are these people that say if we don't do it the world will be a less safe place, but i look at what the department of homeland security does and how they waste money and i just don't believe that. i think we could do much less. we should attack people who attack us we shouldn't be isolationist that is how people see it get smeared it there's nothing isolationist about it we should trade with other people and write books that torment the mullahs and distribute them in those countries but to say we can police the world's we can't afford it in the mix more enemies. strategies and freedom fest. john hunt, i have watched a lot of your shows and is seems to me, correct me if i'm wrong, that more and more when you confront the government agencies after deutsch told the story of

how ridiculous it is and then you say we asked the government agent to respond to this and say refused to comment do you find this happening more and more or less and less, government people or whoever, are they willing to talk to you? what's been your experience now that you have moved to fox news? >> fewer of them -- when i was at abc some of them would see abc and say government and they would talk and once they see fox they really want to talk. corporations are no better. most of them don't want to talk either when you have bad news about this. >> michael myers of the civil rights coalition. you said the founders had it right. the founders talked about.

>> let me ask a question. the founders had we the people have been to the constitution. not the government, we the people by law which and put the equal protection clause be amended the constitution for the women for the right to vote and the elected representative of people passed the 1964 and 1965 act, which provided for the quality of treatment with respect to the public accommodations that everyone in the notion of freedom, so my question to you is what you repeal the equal protection clause or the civil rights act. >> went on to give the microphone to your right to enter napolitano to answer most of that question for me. [laughter]

>> i will start off by saying provocative enough to say yes i would have repealed to of the seven, 11, frigate parts of the civil rights act that said i as a private citizen don't have the right to discriminate. as adults we should have a privacy around us and if i want to hire only koreans or only one arms people, that should be my right in the civil rights act which was right to prevent the government discrimination. and most of the horrors of our history our government discrimination, government legalized slavery, government in prosed jim crow and the right to get rid of that. it's not right to tell private citizens of whom they can associate with.

he's more knowledge of any representative the point of view on this stuff better than point >> i don't think i could say it any better than you did, john. the whole purpose of the 14th amendment was to ensure the disabilities on the federal but the fifth amendment would be of the states. disabilities meaning the state can't discriminate on the basis of race and there's nothing in there about private discrimination to the 14th amendment is the linchpin to freedom otherwise we have 50 tyrannies and 50 state governments. the 14th amendment is to be lauded by those freedoms. but the civil rights act telling them who can come onto your private property that is a step that the never contemplated. i would repeal the part of the behavior hopper that regulates public behavior. jim crow had to go and gave

brown the board of education and those public schools, government schools. >> if i want to run a hotel and keep you out of want to have a white person hotel and the market would correct for that i would boycott that would tell and lots of people would come and the market was a sort that out better than the law. >> i look at the assets deployed by the other side which include most of the media and the whole educational establishment and then add demographics to that increasing numbers of people are getting transfer payments which intuitively none of them want to give up. no we can't to our side.

i'm not good at sharing people on that. [laughter] thomas jefferson did say it's the national progress to say that for government to grow and liberty to yield. but the cost of that's happened in spite of that some of the thanks to this group i never thought that welfare would ever be repealed. who could be against that and then charles murray wrote losing ground, and the idea of losing ground change the way people think about things and how people have gotten off of welfare and found jobs because of that. look at how capitalists produce so many good things. when i said no, they can't. i left out of my speech and i shouldn't that doesn't mean that we can't and we come through our clubs and charities and entrepreneurs pursuing profit has given us cell phones and

air-conditioning and food and music and travel that only kings and queens once had. also the private sector through the amol spirit of capitalism that seems to overcome this trend. also as the transfer payments get uglier it will get uglier first and other places in greece and japan where there are more people our age and they will look first maybe we will learn from that. look at steve over there. the states are suddenly paying attention to their bankrupt pension funds this is too boring i thought with someone first presented me with these ideas state pension funds and their deficit tonight on fox news, no one is going to watch that. yet the states are now -- this is now in the news so i am optimistic about that. >> in the business of trying to persuade people -- >> you have to say who you are.

>> i'm heather. i ron the grindle foundation and its an independent women's voice. those of us in the business of trying to persuade people fully recognize that this is an intellectual argument and not an emotional one and therefore much harder and much less intuitive to make. but you yourself have transition from, you know, being sympathetic to the argument of the left, the right, and i'm sure you have many people that have come to you over time saying that the too have had the same epiphany and i wonder if you can tell us what are some of those arguments and observations that led them to have those transitions and how they felt that hour perhaps on trade points for us to make inroads. >> i changed because as a reporter i cheer on regulation and what should fail and then discovered the magazines. i know of no one that took the same path. i have many times asked the same

question of people and the most common answer that i've gotten is i believed in that until i started a business or tried to start a business and was faced with the taxes and the regulation. heck even george mcgovern said that. but, unfortunately we can't persuade everyone to try to start a business. so, we have to get them into high school. >> private business consultant. we all know about obamacare and what it may do. research in your book or research in the program what are some of the other areas in which you see the government getting more and more involved under the radar that we ought to be thinking about? >> every area. today in "the wall street

journal" it was somebody announced the federal government was requiring all private contractors to hire seven per cent disabled people. once hoveys laws for quality exist they have constant growth. i think health care is one of the biggest threats. once they start paying for your health care, they have the right to tell you what you can eat, and then they have the right to have exercised the police coming to your home to make you run laps and do pushups. clearly health care is the big one. it's what's going to bankrupt first is medicare. and everybody loves medicare. especially people our age coming and people our age boat and people don't know that they are getting back to to three times on average what they paid in because we really refuse to die. and we want all of the coal medical stuff that we can get.

>> i wonder if you would address the question that is raised by bill clinton and jeffrey sachs. it refers to the fact that the united states some what vividly that we give to foreign nations on 14th according to the standard that's used by former president clinton but when you look at the private charities that the united states provides, namely the churches of the education's foundations and the kind of plans that are made to the nations, we are by far the most generous nation in the world. that argument is very rarely made if ever all and i wonder if he would comment. >> i think that you have answered your own question. it's not true what they say because -- i would add private individuals gave and all these people go to these countries and do missionary work. what right does my government have to forcibly take money from me and have my government give money to other countries?

so, i would say ron paul is right. we should cut it to zero and the age should be given to private individuals that want to come and americans are uniquely generous that way. it's funny churches tell people to tie the 10% rates, and americans are the most generous but even in america people don't give 10% of their income that average is closer to two or 3% rate in south america and europe they did not even 1% but americans are more generous than anybody. >> when you said is the basis of your book and something that a lot of other things that are set and basically that it's not obvious how capitalism more economic freedom leads to the prosperity that we have come in and that is one of the reasons it is such a hard sell. even going all the way back to the essay about the scene and the unseen, but if that is true, why is it that we have this

march towards democracy and capitalism that not only to cold here in the united states but from here has spread around the world and people would argue that instead, in fact this is a kind of natural evolution that goes through smaller cycles of regression but that in fact it is natural to our way of thinking. how do you respond to that? what do you see that other people have? you have to start to say what are we doing wrong? in communist china they look at hong kong and they saw prosperity and said we should try some experiments. state capitalism gets the credit but the diversified greatly. they have let each province have its own rules. like an education choice. by and large, the bureaucracy that was the choice only increases and becomes more powerful. but once a mother sees johnny

down the street is happy to go to school, and likes school and seems to be learning more, she wants what he has come and if he is any private school or charter school, that does fight the states. but in the comfortable countries, europe, united states, the spider web of bureaucracy does continue to grow. it's intuitive. >> heather macdonald at the manhattan institute. you speak about the intuitive appeal of the argument the government can solve our problems. there is another very intuitive and appealing argument that popular these days which is that growing inequality is a serious problem for society. you agree with the data that shows it is going on and that there has been stagnation the lubber half of the population and do you think that it is a problem either to the extent

that it's the result of government policies or what is what is it simply was the natural result of the capitalist society that we would have this increasing inequality would you say that is a problem? >> as a libertarian i would say no it isn't a problem. if people are free there are some that would have much more than others. but as a human being i say it's a problem. it's why they are writing in chile. one of the big reasons is income inequality and education. i am annoyed that he gets more money than i have. i want some, and i should have that, and it's just a part of human nature. the statistics of america are woefully misleading in that they show the lowest quintile is stuck there and the highest quintile gets rich. they do that in the months the

stock market went up and then of course the people but the top of richer, and the people of the bottom are just as poor but they are not the same people. they are oprah winfrey. they are the welfare mother that is now in the top, but they don't count them that way the just compare the lowest quintile let the top, and i'm sure that your knowledgeable staff petition can tell this better than all right. but the numbers are distorted, but it is a real social political problem because people don't like the disparity. >> president of staten island. i like what you said about people are always reaching out to something that they want without working for it. it's a change for the country of entitlement. we have 5% of the families in 1960 we have 41% now.

as an example, and i'm going to be critical of both, republican and democratic parties. they keep feeding into the system. i come from the highest income in the city of new york on the south shore. i am speaking to the teachers down there, speaking to the two young ladies in high school and one is telling the other one and the officer says why? they will give me an apartment and i will give you $310 a month. if you ever do get married of course they will stop it. we need coverage. both sides have been encouraging it it just keeps increasing and increasing. >> d 12 lead that woman star on the streets? why not. i don't know what i want. >> expect the people around you to support you it's got to be

loud and clear by both parties. i saw what happened in new york state on the budget reform and the republicans already went along with it. of course the government says you want your redistricting you go along with that. that's the problem to read >> let's get john a response here. >> in america we are not going to let people starve on the street and there is no need for it. before we had a giant welfare social bureaucracy that we have now, nobody practically nobody starved on the streets now because we have thousands of mutual aid societies all of the country, private charities to this better and they were better at saving to that woman that was pregnant just because she would get free stuff that no we are not going to take care of you for that and you better not. they were basically overtly church and out of business by the welfare state, but people just said i don't need to do this anymore. the government will do that, and the government does it clumsy and badly.

>> i think we have to wrap it up because there is a car waiting for you but good luck with the tour. [applause] now more from oklahoma city. >> i own the full circle bookstore in oklahoma city. the store was started almost 40 years ago by a young man by the name of mark. in 1978i was running a significant public company and felt like we needed more something tangible so i bought

the story and ran it on the weekends. over time it's just kind of run. in 1980 there was a fire and a restaurant next door and we moved into this building and we've been in this building for 32 years. i think we survive by increasing our focus all the time of the nature of our customer, on the quality of customer service, because we think that it turns out that most places that change are very good at that part and that is what we did very well. by emphasizing events and making it the center of the community, not just a very center but literally the center of the community, and by projecting to the world what we were doing and what was here and that seems to have worked and continues to work and we innovate all the time. we are forever trying to come up with new ideas and approaches for doing things. new kinds of approaches and

events to add to the book plays. we do a service called the book catering where we take books and anybody speaking in the city anywhere that has books we will take books. that's turned out to be very helpful thing to us. sometimes the author comes to the store, sometimes they don't. and the find autographed stock. somebody in the city makes a difference as well as what we saw. i think it's like most places. there is an element of our customer race and mysteries and popular fiction, and we probably have most of the markets and the literary fiction. a lot of them are non-fiction of course. biography in particular seems to do well. current events as well and politics as well. it is just a broad spectrum. and in books, we place a great emphasis on things that are not

oklahoma or by oklahoma, and that results in our having a lot of authors here with that focus and that inclines people's focus. when i originally got in the business my vision was to grow gracefully into my old age in the business kind of smoking a pipe image of myself. as it turns out i don't smoke a pipe anymore and it's become globally competitive and to me competing initially and that changes something we learned how to do because we cater to the people that are serious readers and restructure our pricing sources and promotions around the idea and have the most knowledgeable staff by far as anybody in the city and that works well against the chains. then to compete against amazon gets tougher but we've held our own against that. electronic books are another matter that is taking a

significant percentage of the market away and completely out of our opportunity to participate. there is no way to directly compete with them except convince people they are foolish to go to them and that is not going to happen. but what i think i found is that that seems to be i would say it's peaking but it's not the new adapters have evolved in the market is not growing as fast and i think there will remain the niche for the books more than half of the market will remain and as long as that is true we can compete. >> what is your advice to somebody that wants to start an independent bookstore? >> don't. and i don't mean to be harsh but this isn't a business for someone to build their life around in the future. it's a great business for people like us to build it and live with and i certainly hope as someone succeeds to this bookstore as it went from

scratch now it's beyond challenging. >> for more information on this and other cities on the local content for hinkle to work, go to c-span.org/localcontent.

..